Over the River LXXIII
February 13, 2024
Highlights and lowlights from my 73rd two-wheeled trek to the Great State of New York:
1. Boarding the regional bus at Niagara College was a DWAM™ who also had a bottle of hand sanitizer hanging from her backpack. You can never be too careful when it comes to health and safety. Viruses are everywhere. Lurking around every street corner. Just waiting to pounce on people just like her who, no doubt, are fully “protected” by all the latest offerings of the pharmaceutical industry. Thank you science! Later, after disembarking on Thorold Stone Road, she made sure to leave her dipshit mask on. Outside.
2. Video of the ride down Rainbow Boulevard and Buffalo Avenue:
3. Walking down Oliver Street in North Tonawanda was an unusually forlorn fellowette who had the look of someone who was in the middle of a 99-year prison sentence.
4. My rest stop came at Little Black Heart Coffee in North Tonawanda, where there was no menu or food on display. Apparently you’re just supposed to know what they offer. For a moment there, I thought I had walked into a doctor’s office by mistake. I took a guess and asked if tea was available, so they made me a bag. Carefully filling it. One. Tiny. Scoop. At. A. Time. Then the girl tied it up by hand and filled the cup with hot water from a dispenser located under the counter. The whole experience was a little odd, to say the least.
5. Soon after I took a seat by the window, a woman with several rings in each ear and covered in tattoos, including a little heart on her right hand, placed an order and sat down with her boyfriend. While she waited several minutes for some creamy strawberry red beverage, I learned that she had a dream about a private jet, though she had been suffering from insomnia lately.
They were followed by a big bearded guy with two women. While waiting for their order, he told them that someone he knew recommended buying some seeds for $20 a bag on Amazon and boiling them, but to be careful because taking too many can be toxic. One of the women with him then mentioned how she always needs to be on time because can’t be, like, a few minutes late.
A few minutes later, a woman came in with SPIRITUAL GANGSTER printed on the back of her sweatpants placed an order with the green-haired girl behind the counter, then went across the street to take care of some business before coming back. When she returned, she asked Green Haired Girl about the baby her friend just had. Green Haired Girl said the baby was doing fine, but the mother was anxious the whole time because it was her first child. There had also been problems with the pregnancy and she had considered using a surrogate instead.
6. Across the street from this place was this sign hanging in the window of a like-minded individual:
7. Woody Woodpecker on Wheatfield Road:
8. If the shoe fits . . .
9. Spotted in Wheatfield was a sign outside a house which read, “Protected by a pit bull, the Lord and a gun.”
10. Words of wisdom . . .
11. A new sign on the approach to the Niagara Scenic Parkway directing over-height vehicles to a pull-off area in advance of a low underpass. That the state needs to do such a thing is, frankly, pathetic. The low clearance is clearly signed in numerous places as far back as Grand Island. Yet several years ago, a trucker from Nova Scotia, using his GPS as a brain substitute, ignored all the signage, including those indicating that commercial trucks of any size aren’t permitted on the NSP, and slammed into the bridge.
12. The term “ambulance chasers” come to mind . . .
13. This is Sam. He wants us all to be dipshits. All the time. Even though he isn’t wearing a dipshit mask himself. Not that it matters, since they don’t work anyway.
14. The new Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Welcome Center in the state park, named for the Bills founder:
15. Inside the welcome center, which was surprisingly open at this time of year, given how wimpy Americans are about cold, were these new all-gender washrooms. Men, women, gender non-conforming, gender queer, gender fluid, non-binary, trans and two-spirit people use the same facility and go into a stall to do their business. No urinals provided, of course. How welcoming and inclusive of them.
16. Also inside the welcome center was a souvenir shop where cash is not accepted. They do, however, provide a self-serve kiosk where you can purchase a prepaid Visa card with cash. But no wet bills, please, as the sign on the machine indicates.
17. After pulling my now infamous Nana Mouskouri act at the Rainbow Bridge toll booth with my nickels and dimes, for the first time, CBP was doing outbound inspections. No, they weren’t asking if I was really sure I wanted to cross Checkpoint Charlie and return to Ostdeutschland. Instead, they asked where I had been, if I had met up with anyone while in the U.S. and if anyone had asked me to take anything to Canada. All in all, I got more scrutiny than when I went through customs on my way in. It wasn’t just me either, as they looked inside the trunk of a white car with Ontario plates in front of me.
18. Free books along the trail not far from Niagara Falls (Canada) City Hall . . .
19. The driver of the red Chevy on the QEW near the Mountain Road interchange apparently thought he was supposed to drive on the white line, not between them.
20. On the back of a car with a F--- Trudeau bumper sticker was another sticker with the slogan, “Elect a clown, expect a circus.”
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